Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
After completing an early draft, Lincoln searched out someone to listen as he read it aloud. It was a Sunday night, and the mansion was nearly vacant. Entering the library, the president was delighted to find William Stoddard. “Ah! I’m glad you’re here,” Lincoln said. “Come over into my room.” Stoddard followed him into his office. “Sit down,” Lincoln urged. “What I want is an audience. Nothing sounds the same when there isn’t anybody to hear it and find fault with it.” Stoddard expressed doubt that he would be inclined to criticize the president’s words. “Yes, you will,” Lincoln good-humoredly replied. “Everybody else will. It’s just what I want you to do.” Then, taking the sheets of foolscap paper from the end of the cabinet table on which he had been writing, he began to read.
Warming to the task, Lincoln allowed his voice to rise and fall as if he were speaking to an audience of thousands. When he finished, he asked Stoddard’s impression. Stoddard’s sole objection was to fault Lincoln’s metaphor—“Uncle Sam’s web-feet”—for the navy gunboats that plied the rivers and bayous. “I never saw a web-footed gunboat in all my life,” Stoddard said. “They’re a queer kind of duck.” Lincoln laughed. “Some of ’em did get ashore, though. I’ll leave it in, now I know how it’s going to sound.” Then, thanking Stoddard, he bade him good night.
The address was designed to curb the “deceptive and groundless” rumors that Lincoln had secretly rejected peace proposals. If any legitimate propositions should be received, he pledged, they would not be kept a secret from the people he was elected to serve. “But, to be plain,” he went on, “you are dissatisfied with me about the negro…. You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and, perhaps, would have it retracted.” On this point there would be no compromise: “it can not be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life,” for “the promise being made, must be kept.” Furthermore, black soldiers had become so integral to the war effort that “some of the commanders of our armies in the field who have given us our most important successes, believe the emancipation policy, and the use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion….
“Peace does not appear so distant as it did,” Lincoln concluded. “And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it.”
Lincoln continued to refine his letter over the next ten days, stealing what time he could from his public duties. He finally sent it, accompanied with a personal note to Conkling: “You are one of the best public readers. I have but one suggestion. Read it very slowly.” An immense crowd was expected, drawn “from the farm and the workshop,” the local newspaper reported, “from the office and the counting-room,” to prove to the Copperheads that behind the soldiers already in the field were “hundreds of thousands more who are willing to offer their services whenever the country calls.”
Confident in his final composition, Lincoln anticipated a positive reception on September 3 when it would be read to the crowd and then given to newspapers for publication the following day. When he awoke on the morning of the mass meeting, however, he was furious to see a truncated version of his letter printed in the Washington
Daily Chronicle.
Lincoln immediately complained to the editor, John Forney. Don’t blame us, Forney explained to Lincoln, we got it from the Associated Press, and it’s in daily newspapers around the country. Provoked, Lincoln telegraphed Conkling in Springfield. “I am mortified this morning to find the letter to you, botched up, in the Eastern papers, telegraphed from Chicago. How did this happen?”
Hearing nothing that day from Conkling, Lincoln remained testy. When a petitioner tried to solicit his help in securing property for a Memphis woman whose husband was in the Confederate Army, the president uncharacteristically replied that he had “neither the means nor time” to consider the request and that “the impropriety of bringing such cases to me, is obvious to any one.”
The following morning, a message arrived from Conkling. Apparently, he had telegraphed the letter in advance, with “strict injunctions not to permit it to be published before the meeting or make any improper use of it.” He was “mortified” that someone had broken faith, but trusted that “no prejudicial results have been experienced as the whole Letter was published the next day.”
In fact, the publication of the entire letter received excellent reviews. “Disclaiming the arts of the diplomatist, the cunning of the politician, and the graces of rhetoric, he comes straight to the points he wants to discuss,” praised the
New York Daily Tribune.
“The most consummate rhetorician never used language more pat to the purpose,” the
New York Times
declared, “and still there is not a word in the letter not familiar to the plainest plowman.” While “felicity of speech” was usually linked to “high culture,” the
Times
continued, Lincoln, “in his own independent, and perhaps we might say very peculiar, way,” exhibits a “felicity of speech far surpassing” stylistic preference. He possesses a far more valuable “felicity of thought,” which “invariably gets at the needed truth of the time,” hitting “the very nail of all others which needs driving.” The
Philadelphia Inquirer
had regarded Lincoln’s unconventional habit of writing public letters with skepticism, but granted that his recent letters, including this one, “have dispelled the doubt. If he is as felicitous in the future, we hope he will continue to write.”
“His last letter is a great thing,” Hay told Nicolay a few days later. “Some hideously bad rhetoric—some indecorums that are infamous—yet the whole letter takes its solid place in history, as a great utterance of a great man. The whole Cabinet could not have tinkered up a letter which could have been compared with it. He can snake a sophism out of its hole, better than all the trained logicians of all schools.”
In its fulsome praise of the letter to Conkling, the
New York Times
also commended a long line of Lincoln’s writings, including his inaugural, the letters to McClellan made public by the congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, and his published letters to Greeley and Corning, which revealed “the same fitness to the occasion, and the same effectiveness in its own direction.” Taken together, these remarkable documents had made Lincoln “the most popular man in the Republic. All the denunciations and all the arts of demagogues are perfectly powerless to wean the people from their faith in him.”
“I know the people want him,” Hay wrote to Nicolay, looking forward to the next election. “There is no mistaking that fact. But politicians are strong yet & he is not their ‘kind of a cat.’ I hope God wont see fit to scourge us for our sins by any one of the two or three most prominent candidates on the ground.”
B
Y THE MIDDLE
of September 1863, all the members of Lincoln’s cabinet had returned from their summer sojourns. Seward came back invigorated by his trip through the lake region with the diplomatic corps. Bates was back from Missouri in time to celebrate his seventieth birthday, grateful that his long life had “been crowned with many blessings, and, comparatively few crosses.” He noted with pride that, as a public figure, he had achieved a reputation “for knowledge and probity, quite as good as I deserve.” Stanton, too, had enjoyed a much-needed vacation with his family in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Chase, in characteristic fashion, had allowed himself scant respite from work, leaving his daughters at the seashore and then peevishly awaiting their return. Welles was gratified to return from his ten-day visit to the Navy Yards, noting in his diary that all his colleagues seemed “glad to see me,—none more so than the President, who cordially and earnestly greeted me. I have been less absent than any other member and was therefore perhaps more missed.” Lincoln himself still enjoyed leisurely nights at the Soldiers’ Home and looked forward to Mary’s homecoming from the Green Mountains.
Grim news from Tennessee deflated the genial, relaxed mood of the president and his cabinet. After the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Lincoln and Stanton had hoped that General Rosecrans, with the Army of the Cumberland, could deliver the “finishing blow to the rebellion.” He was positioned to push the enemy from Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tennessee, with an eye to advancing on Georgia. However, after Rosecrans delivered “a great and bloodless victory at Chattanooga” as the enemy fled from the city before advancing troops, the Confederates regrouped and “unexpectedly appeared in force, on the south bank of [the] Chicamauga.” A furious battle commenced on Saturday, September 19. Within thirty-six hours, the telegrams from the field indicated a stunning Confederate victory. “Chicamauga is as fatal a name in our history as Bull Run,” Dana wired Stanton. Union casualties totaled sixteen thousand men. “We have met with a serious disaster,” Rosecrans acknowledged. “Enemy overwhelmed us, drove our right, pierced our center and scattered troops there.”
Lincoln told Welles that the dispatches reached him “at the Soldiers’ Home shortly after he got asleep, and so disturbed him that he had no more rest, but arose and came to the city and passed the remainder of the night awake and watchful.” At daybreak, the president wandered into Hay’s room, where, seated on the bed, he broke the news to his young aide. “Well, Rosecrans has been whipped, as I feared. I have feared it for several days. I believe I feel trouble in the air before it comes.”
Later that same day, perhaps hoping that the presence of his family might lift his spirits, Lincoln telegraphed Mary. “The air is so clear and cool, and apparently healthy, that I would be glad for you to come. Nothing very particular, but I would be glad [to] see you and Tad.” Mary responded immediately, saying she was “anxious to return home” and had already made plans to do so.
As further reports filtered in, the fallout of the battle proved “less unfavorable than was feared,” a relieved Chase noted. General George Thomas’s corps had held its ground, and the rebels had lost even more troops than the Federals. Chattanooga “still remains in our hands,” Charles Dana wired to Stanton and, with reinforcements of twenty to thirty thousand troops “can be held by this army for from fifteen to twenty days.” Without the additional troops, however, the outnumbered Federals would have to abandon Chattanooga or face another potentially disastrous battle. Everything hinged on whether this massive movement of troops would reach Tennessee in time. Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, Stanton came up with a bold idea that required the president’s approval.
Unwilling to waste the remainder of the night, Stanton dispatched messengers to bring Lincoln, Halleck, Seward, and Chase to a secret meeting in his office. Chase had just retired for the night when the courier rang his bell. “The Secretary of War desires that you will come to the Department immediately & has sent a carriage for you,” he announced. Chase “hastily rose & dressed,” terrified that the enemy had captured Rosecrans and his entire army. John Hay was sent to the Soldiers’ Home to summon Lincoln, who, like Chase, was already in bed. As Lincoln rose to dress, “he was considerably disturbed,” saying that “it was the first time Stanton had ever sent for him.” Guided by the light of the moon, Lincoln and Hay then rode back to the War Department.
When the five men were assembled around the table, the austere Stanton said: “I have invited this meeting because I am thoroughly convinced that something must be done & done immediately.” He proceeded to outline an audacious proposal to remove twenty thousand men from General Meade’s Army of the Potomac to Nashville and Chattanooga under General Hooker’s command. The plan struck both Halleck and Lincoln as dangerous and impractical. Halleck protested that it would take at least forty days to reach Tennessee. The troops would arrive too late, and Meade would be left vulnerable on the Rappahannock. The president agreed. “Why,” he quipped, “you cant get one corps into Washington in the time you fix for reaching Nashville.” A humorous anecdote he employed to illustrate his point “greatly annoyed” Stanton, who remarked that “the danger was too imminent & the occasion [too] serious for jokes.” He said that “he had fully considered the question of practicability & should not have submitted his proposition had he not fully satisfied himself” as to its feasibility.
After further discussion, Chase suggested taking a break for the refreshments Stanton had prepared. “On returning,” Chase recalled, “Mr. Seward took up the subject & supported Mr. Stantons proposition with excellent arguments.” Chase believed that Seward’s support for the proposal was instrumental. Sensing his advantage, Stanton immediately sent an orderly to find Colonel D. C. McCallum, director of the Department of Military Railroads. Stanton had briefed McCallum earlier in the evening and directed him to prepare an estimate of the time necessary to transfer the troops by rail if all available trains were put at his disposal. When McCallum entered, Lincoln described the proposition and asked him to estimate how long it would take to achieve the goal. Without disclosing that he had received prior notice to consider the matter, McCallum asked for a moment to “make a few figures.” Seated at a desk with timetables spread before him, he worked for some time while the room remained silent. Finally, he stood up and said: “I can complete it in seven days.”
“Good!” Stanton exclaimed, turning contemptuously to Halleck. “I told you so! I knew it could be done! Forty days! Forty days indeed, when the life of the nation is at stake!” He then addressed McCallum: “Go ahead; begin now.” At this point, Lincoln interrupted. “I have not yet given my consent,” he reminded the secretary of war. “Colonel McCallum, are you sure about this?” Lincoln asked. “There must be no mistake.” When McCallum said he would “pledge [his] life to accomplish it inside of seven days,” Lincoln was satisfied. “Mr. Secretary, you are the captain. Give the necessary orders and I will approve them.”